School’s Curtain Call for Music Teacher Goes On and On : Theater: La Puente High is renaming its auditorium after Robert Gurnee for his musical productions and what they gave to students for more than 20 years.

Robert Gurnee spent his adult life in the Little Theater at La Puente High School, introducing a generation of teen-agers to the glow of the limelight and the glare of the footlights.

And now, after the curtain has rung down on “Oklahoma,” “The Music Man,” “My Fair Lady” and dozens of other productions, La Puente High School and Gurnee’s former students are giving him a standing ovation that will last forever.

On Oct. 12, the auditorium will be renamed the Robert Gurnee Theater in a ceremony honoring the man who instilled a love of musical theater in his students.

Every spring from 1955 to 1979, Gurnee and his students painted scenery, rigged curtains and lighting, sold advertising for programs, rehearsed lines, and memorized lyrics for the annual musical.

The playbills from the shows they produced read like a walk down Broadway’s memory lane:

“Bells Are Ringing,” “Damn Yankees,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” “Hello, Dolly!” “Camelot.”

Colleen Keith, who played Lady Jane in Gurnee’s production of “Rose Marie,” has a few of those old playbills stored away, along with pictures, yearbooks and loads of memories.

“It’s an experience I’ve never recaptured in my whole life,” said Keith, now a music teacher herself. “I went on to college and appeared in plays and musicals, but nothing outshone what we did in high school.”

Miles Ramsey, now a radio and television producer in Canada, played Buffalo Bill in “Annie Get Your Gun.” His assessment of his old teacher echoes that of many other students.

“Bob Gurnee is one of those very special people that only comes along once in a while. He inspired students and led by example to try and make you exceed your best performance,” Ramsey said.

An unusual number of former Gurnee students have gone on to careers in music.

“I would give Mr. Gurnee credit for any good things I went on to do,” said Jackie Cassey, who had a 25-year career as a nightclub singer after she played Ado Annie in Gurnee’s production of “Oklahoma!”

Gurnee waves off such praise with a modest chuckle.

“It wasn’t me that did everything. I’ve always said that with kids that age all you need is luck and perseverance and you can make them do anything,” the now-retired music teacher said in an interview at his West Covina home.

Perseverance is one quality Gurnee apparently never lacked.

Keith’s mother, Mona Wilk, remembers that Gurnee didn’t have a budget for any of the musicals. Wilk held doughnut sales to pay for costumes and other parents helped out with choreography and selling tickets.

When he decided that the theater needed an orchestra pit, Gurnee got some of the boys from his men’s glee club to go to the school on a Saturday to dig one.

All the musicals were produced solely by the students, with Gurnee involving hundreds of students in each production as a way of saving money and getting them interested in the shows. Art classes designed sets and drew covers for the programs. The stage and lighting crews were made up of students. The band played the score and vocalists sang offstage during chorus numbers.

Gurnee took the productions seriously and demanded professionalism from all involved. His rules about silence during rehearsals once almost got him into trouble.

“We were rehearsing one day and a girl burst into the auditorium yelling my name. I turned around and sternly told her to be quiet until we were finished. Then, when I was through with that number, I asked what she wanted. ‘Mr. Gurnee, the building is on fire!’ she said.”

La Puente in the mid-1950s was a rural community where few, if any, students had ever seen live theater, said Marc Allen Trujillo, who appeared in “Oklahoma!”

But that did not stop Gurnee.

“We used people that had never been on a stage before. They’d never sung a note or said a line. But they all did a good job,” he said. “We had some wonderful kids in those days. They had a certain look about them. They had self-respect.”

Gurnee’s professional experience, which included singing with the Robert Shaw Collegiate Chorale in New York and as a featured tenor with the Roger Wagner Chorale, was a great asset.

To make up for his students’ lack of sophistication, Gurnee would describe for them the stage performances he had seen in New York or while on tour.

“We were all terribly impressed with him,” recalled Trujillo, now a singer and composer. “We got a great insight into the business side of entertaining. He was colorful and urbane, which was something you didn’t find much in La Puente.”

And his musicals were always smashing successes, packing in audiences and drawing rave reviews from parents and visitors.

Not that there weren’t occasional lapses.

Trujillo remembers the night he ripped his pants backstage and came onstage for a dance number with large safety pins visibly holding the seam together. And the night he literally ran into a teacher in his haste to make a cue and broke the man’s leg.

Working with students led to some embarrassing moments, such as the time the student stage crew took so long to change the scenery that the orchestra had to repeat interlude music two or three times.

During one performance of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” Gurnee’s lead soprano developed laryngitis and managed only a croak during her opening song. “I still shudder to think of it,” Gurnee said.

And then there was the time when the boy playing the lead in “Bye, Bye Birdie” warbled through the entire evening half a tone sharp. “I was down in the orchestra pit singing along with him and waving, trying to get him back on pitch,” Gurnee said.

Sally Fallon, Gurnee’s longtime accompanist and a member of the pit orchestra for many of his productions, said the theater dedication is a testament to the music teacher’s contributions to the community. “He was a real inspiration to youngsters here,” she said. “He gave all of his time to the kids of La Puente.”

Over the years, people asked Gurnee why he stayed at the school, when other staff members left to become professionals in the entertainment business--as did some of his own students.

“Sometimes I thought, ‘Why do I bother putting on these shows with kids?’ ” he said. “But when I saw what the kids got out of it, I decided that was where my talents lay and that I’d better stick with it.”

Klein is a regular contributor to San Gabriel Valley View.

Friends and former students of La Puente High School music teacher Robert Gurnee are planning a dinner in his honor for Oct. 13, the day after the high school theater will be renamed in his honor.

Former colleagues, students and friends are invited and should contact Sally Fallon at (818) 330-8314 for more information.